Officials Want More Metro Ave HS Seats for Glendale Students

By Conor Greene

As the Metropolitan Avenue school complex gets closer to its anticipated opening this fall, the battle over who gets to occupy the building is continuing with officials pushing for more seats for students in the Glendale area.

On Monday, members of Community Board 5’s Education Committee agreed to present three resolutions to the full board regarding the new complex, with features a 1,000 seat high school to be shared between District 24 and District 28, along with a 1,000seat 6-12 school dedicated solely for District 28.

The three resolutions call for 200 additional seats in the high school for students in District 24 so the two districts would more evenly split the total number of new high school seats. It also asks that a “second tier” be created so that priority shifts to students in PS 91’s zone if the 125 seats in each grade level currently assigned to District 24 aren’t filled from students in the PS/IS 87 and PS/IS 113 areas. The third resolution asks that the high school be opened to both ninth and tenth graders in its first year, instead of just freshmen as proposed.

The resolutions were expected to be voted on by the full CB 5 membership at its monthly meeting this past Wednesday. Check next week’s Forum West for an update on the vote.

In December, Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Middle Village) wrote to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein asking that a secondary zone be created limited to District 24 students to ensure the area doesn’t lose part of its 125 seat allocation. “The people of Glendale and Middle Village are in dire need of high school options and those families just outside the local zone should be given preference… before the school opens up to the rest of Queens,” she wrote.

Two weeks later, Crowley wrote to Klein to request that “immediate action” is taken to alleviate “dire overcrowding” in District 24. She proposed that the new Maspeth High School, which won’t be ready until 2012, be opened up in the available space at the Metropolitan Avenue complex, since that facility won’t be filled to capacity for several years. Once the Maspeth High School is complete, the students, teachers and administrators would simply move to the new building.

“As I understand, the [DOE] plans to incrementally ‘grow’ the two new schools located on the Metropolitan Avenue Complex,” wrote Crowley. “During the first years these schools are open the building will be at approximately 25% capacity. I believe we can take immediate action to alleviate the overcrowding of Queens high schools without sacrificing the level of education… If we act now to put together a school leadership team and have the administration for the Maspeth High School to start teaching children as early as the fall of this year.”

The issue of only opening the next high school up to one grade at a time has been met with criticism from some officials and parents due to the current situation. “The DOE’s argument that new schools do better when grades are phased in does merit consideration, but our Queens high schools are massively overcrowded, so delaying utilization of 1,000 new high school seats for many years can’t be in the best interested of our Queens high school students,” Dmytro Fedkowskyj, who is a CB 5member and the Borough President’s appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, told The Forum.

The DOE said last month that parents and officials had several weeks to comment on the proposed zoning boundaries. The department didn’t immediately return a message for comment on the zoning proposal or the plan to open the school only to 9th grade, and Crowley’s office didn’t receive a formal response to either December letter.

The overcrowding situation in Queens has forced a number of high schools to operate on split sessions. According to Fedkowskyj, Francis Lewis is at 175% capacity on five sessions, Forest Hills High School is at 160% capacity on three sessions, Cardozzo is at 150% capacity on three sessions, and both Grover Cleveland and Newtown are at about 120% capacity while operating on multiple sessions.

At Monday’s meeting, attendees including D24 President Nick Comaianni suggested the three requests be submitted to the DOE as separate resolutions to prevent them all from being rejected at once. “Taking seats away from Forest Hills to give to us is not happening,” he said. “The reality is, Forest Hills will fight tooth and nail for those seats.”

Girl Struck and Killed by School Bus

Hit in Elmhurst on Way to Francis Lewis HS

By Conor Greene

A 14-year-old girl was killed last week while on her way to school when a school bus struck her at a busy Elmhurst intersection.

Jasmine Paragas, an honors student at Francis Lewis High School who excelled in foreign languages, was hit at 8:10 a.m. last Thursday as she crossed 57th Avenue near the Queens Center Mall. She was pronounced dead less than an hour later at Elmhurst Hospital Center.

George Severino, 62, was driving the yellow minibus north on 90th Street when he turned left onto 57th Avenue, striking the girl in the crosswalk. The driver, who works for JEA Bus Company, stayed at the scene and was issued summonses for failure to yield to a pedestrian and for equipment violations.

There were four adult passengers in the minibus at the time of the accident, which occurred while Severino was transporting them to an education center for adults with special needs. He told the Daily News that he was too distraught to comment as he stood at the scene, weeping. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now,” he said. According to that report, Severino told police that he heard a thump, looked in the rearview mirror and say the girl lying in the intersection.

The driver has been involved in at least two prior accidents, according to state motor vehicle records. He was found guilty of an unsafe lane change in June 2007, and in 2006 was involved in a Brooklyn accident in which another person was injured.

Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Education, told the New York Times that Jasmine was a freshman who excelled in foreign languages and English. “She applied for and was accepted into the school’s University Scholars Program, which is an accelerated program for high school students at Francis Lewis,” said Feinberg.

The accident occurred just minutes after Jasmine’s mother had walked with her across Queens Boulevard, which is known as one of the city’s most dangerous roads for pedestrians to cross. Her mother had entered a subway station before the accident happened.

“She made it safe, but still this happened,” the girl’s cousin, Mac Tecson, told the Daily News. “It’s horrible. It happened so quickly. Nobody can believe it.” A picture of Jasmine was placed in a front window of the family’s house, which is just blocks from the tragic scene. A crisis team was brought into Francis Lewis to counsel students and staff as they mourned the loss.

According to reports, the family moved to Queens from the Philippines about six years ago and live on the top floor of a three-story house in Elmhurst.

Neighbor Showkat Kazi told reporters that the girl’s mother walked Jasmine across Queens Boulevard to the Q88 bus stop every morning. “It’s very hard for me… to take it,” he told CBS-TV. “She’s just like my daughter. She was playing at my house all the time.”